.comment: Leveraging Linux - page 2

Due Diligence

November 14, 2001

By
Dennis E. Powell

There are two ways -- two and one-half, actually -- to prepare for the inevitable day
when "anything but Microsoft" is the anguished cry from the legal
department. They depend on whether you're currently in a corporate IT department or not,
and, if you are, how that department is run (friends in these positions tell me that the
choices are "poorly" and "unbelievably poorly," though there are bound
to be a few good ones around).

It's important to let the higher ups know, and let them know that you know, that
Microsoft systems are vulnerable -- and that there is an alternative that is both cheap
and effective. Yup, Linux. When reports of vulnerabilities surface, cc 'em to the powers
that be. At the same time -- and here diplomacy is the order of the day -- point out the
alternative that exists in the Linux world, and how for no or next-to-no money a way
around the vulnerability can be had.

And keep copies of it all, every note, every response.

With luck, you'll be putting the wheels in motion for first a pilot project, perhaps a
server or two, then a gradual migration to Linux, ultimately to the desktop. Linux is
ready for it, but most IT departments aren't. Again, diplomacy is essential.

If your luck is not quite this good, never mind. Bide your time, keep that folder of
printouts of all your messages and the responses safe at home, and wait. Don't jump rank,
but be ready to step in when your boss is having his personal pucker factor cured via some
sort of reaming device. Be ready to be the hero when a hero is needed.

Of course, this requires that you be current as to Linux, which your reading this
suggests that you are or want to be.

What follows applies to everyone, currently employed in the IT world or not.

Choose a distribution and really learn it. Subscribe to its mailing list, its security
mailing list, its announcement mailing list. Make friends there. You'll find a range of
users from the single-machine hobbyist to the SOHO networker to people from some
astoundingly big companies. You'll likely encounter people who actually participated in
putting the distribution together (though they're seldom there as official company
representatives, so if you want to confront the distributor about something, take it
through other channels). There is a wealth of knowledge on the mailing lists that cannot
be found anywhere else, and it's all free of cost.

Learn everything you can about configuring the interesting stuff and the boring stuff,
too, because the boring stuff was written with someone in mind, and that someone is
companies. Get to where you can put together a solid firewall as easily as you can put in
a new motherboard. Read with an eye toward security. Bob Toxen's Real World Linux Security
is a good text, but this doesn't free you from staying current as to the latest exploits
and the fixes for them.

Be armed with success stories -- places that have taken the leap and lived. Largo,
Florida, is one such place, though the move was from UnixWare to Linux. And have in mind a
definite plan for a migration to Linux, with special attention toward it being as
undisruptive as possible. This probably means moving servers over first, then desktops, a
group or department at a time. Be prepared to smile during enormous griping, because any
change will be met with griping. (So, come to think of it, will no change at all.) Again,
your skills as a diplomat and teacher will be among your most important tools.

Only when you have gotten this degree of knowledge can you be confident that your
sponsorship of a move to Linux will be a career enhancer and will do good for the company
involved.

If you're not in the IT business yet but want to be, once you've gotten fluent in
things Linux you can and should go ahead and make your pitch. Your goal is to replace all
those MSCE drones who are being paid way too much to call Microsoft tech support. There
are scads of businesses who get their IT work from outside contractors. You need to sell
not just yourself but Linux as well, making the job doubly difficult. One of your best
selling points, fortunately, is Microsoft itself. Do not go marching in with some
political screed about how intellectual property is wrong and so on. Instead, be prepared
to point out the things that are especially good about Linux -- low cost, high security,
the inability of one user to screw up the whole system, long uptime, a wide array of
high-quality software, quick bug fixing, and so on. You're there to solve a problem that
the company may not know it has.

And if you don't get the gig right off the bat, don't worry. Microsoft is positioning
itself to become just about as unattractive as possible. And that hypothetical lawsuit
looms -- it will surely come to pass. And when it does, you'll be amazed at how popular
you've suddenly become.